Friday, September 27, 2013

Over the cliff

by digby

In case you were wondering whether this polarization is attributable to both parties, it's not:

Below we use DW-NOMINATE scores updated through the August recess of the 113th Congress to plot the mean first dimension (liberal-conservative) scores of Republicans and Democrats and the difference in these party means over time. Using the difference of party means as a measure of polarization, we find that polarization ticked upwards from 1.09 in the 112th House to 1.11 in the 113th House. This increase is entirely attributable to a change in the House Republican mean from 0.69 to 0.71 on the liberal-conservative dimension. House Democrats in the 112th and 113th Congresses both occupied a mean position of -0.40.